The Google Earth 5.0 Beta is out, but downloading requires using the Google Updater which doesn't support authenticated proxy servers (which we have here at my workplace). For many months now I've gotten this message:

"As you've discovered, due to certain security changes in Microsoft Windows, Google Updater 2.0 isn't able to support proxy servers that require authentication. We understand that some users would like this functionality, and we've added it to our list of requested features. User feedback is very important to us. We're working on a variety of improvements, so please stay tuned."

Does anyone know if there is there a way to get this file without going through Google Updater? Is it a big issue for them to support authenticated proxies? I'm not familiar enough with it to know.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. --- Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

Assuming you're behind an ISA proxy that is using NTLM authentication, it does seem to be difficult to support. That's my situation at work and it seems to be extremely difficult to find information about supporting that situation properly. Google App Engine lacks NTLM support as well and it has been a constant source of headaches for me.

You set up NTLM-APS on your machine with the NTLM credentials, and then in all those programs that don't support NTLM you tell them to use NTLM-APS as their proxy. It will handle all the NTLM authentication with the ISA proxy, pass the traffic back and forth just fine, and those programs should act like they were using a proxy that didn't require NTLM authentication.

This seems to work pretty well in most cases and even though a GAE update caused it to no longer meet my original needs, I still use it for a few other programs. Though, I haven't tried it with Google Earth/Update.

Granted, if it's not NTLM or you're unable to install Python, this is all pretty useless for you.